Seth Godin on Building a Solopreneur Business: Stop Hiring Yourself as the Cheapest Freelancer

Seth Godin says that if failure is not an option, then neither is success. Here's the scene: the biggest crisis of his career was when, by mistake, a promotional email for a deodorant ended up in the inbox of all AOL users. Not once, but twice. The customer was furious. Seth tried to solve it himself, failed again, and in the end had to pay someone more than he earned to fix the mess. Today, everything that required four people back then can be done with a platform that costs twenty dollars a month. But the real lesson is not about technology: it's about what it really means to be "your own boss." Most people who work alone fall into a trap: they take on all the tasks just because it's the cheapest solution. Seth calls it "hiring yourself as the cheapest freelancer." It seems like efficiency, but in reality it is the death of growth. The real leap, for those who want to be a solopreneur, is not to work harder, but to choose what to really put your heart into. And here comes the twist: every hour you spend doing something that you could entrust to someone else, just because no one costs less than you, is an hour taken away from what only you can do. Seth puts it bluntly: "Every time you hire yourself as the cheapest freelancer, you're sabotaging your goal of building something bigger than yourself." And it's not just a question of money: the point is whether you want to be the linchpin of an ecosystem or the underpaid jack-of-all-trades in your own company. Godin distinguishes three figures: the freelancer, who sells their time and can only improve by choosing better clients; the solopreneur, who builds relationships and communities, stages something that wasn't there, and coordinates others; and the classic entrepreneur, who creates assets and systems that work without them. And then there's the personal backstory: he too, after founding companies, selling companies, and working with web giants, chose to return to the freelance model, precisely because he no longer wanted to manage employees. But every now and then he still falls into the temptation of "hiring himself" as a hobby, like when he makes the logo himself. He admits it: it's fear of growing, fear of the consequences of scaling, fear of changing his role. And he adds: "The truly indispensable people are those who really put themselves out there, not those who do everything on their own." Then there's the story of the moon: one night in Santa Fe, Neil Armstrong talks about Apollo 11 in front of a campfire, the sky clear, the full moon rising behind him. Armstrong stops, points to it, and says, "I've been there." Seth uses this to remind us that there are footprints on the moon, and that no one does impossible things alone: it took three astronauts, thousands of engineers, and less computing power than what you have in your pocket on your phone today. So, instead of thinking that to grow you have to do like Elon Musk or Google, he tells you: find your "minimum audience", serve ten people who feel the difference, not ten thousand who choose you just because you're cheap. Don't you want to be crushed by the giants? Don't compete on their turf. Build trust, not just attention. There's a detail you don't expect: Godin says that talent is overrated. Almost everything can be learned, especially attitude. “Smiling, being optimistic, encouraging: these are choices, so they are skills.” And if you don't have the money to pay others, the advice is: choose projects of the right size that you can really support. You don't need to build a search engine; just find ten people with a real problem that you can solve. And the phrase that comes back, like a mantra, is this: "People like us do things like these." It's not just marketing, it's identity, it's the foundation of every authentic community. Because the real risk today is not failure: it is remaining anonymous, indistinguishable, always busy chasing everything and everyone without ever really being "on the hook", that is, responsible, visible, unique. The heart of the matter is all here: stop hiring yourself as the cheapest freelancer. If you want to scale, put your time where only you can make a difference. And if you don't want to scale, that's fine: but make a conscious choice. Because even the courage to stay small, to say no to growth at all costs, is a valid choice. The footprints on the moon were not left by one person, but by a team. And you don't have to be the whole team: you have to be the one who leaves the mark. Stop paying yourself on the cheap, and choose where you really want to be indispensable. If this perspective has changed the way you see working as a soloist, you can mark I'm In on Lara Notes: it's not a like, it's your declaration that this idea is now part of how you think. And if you happen to tell someone that every hour spent "saving" on yourself is an hour stolen from your true growth, on Lara Notes Shared Offline you can tag those who were with you, so that conversation remains. This Note comes from Istoria and saves you 54 minutes of listening.